


A memory encountered

by sshysmm



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5019442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short drabble about a conversation between Reid and his daughter that stirs up an old memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A memory encountered

“Do you know what, my daddy?”

Edmund Reid looks down from his book. The fire is lit, providing most of the illumination in the cozy living room. At his feet Mathilda colours in on sheets of paper, the thick carpet by her father’s seat preferable to the empty chairs around the room. It is an activity too young for her and by all definitions of propriety she should be seated neatly on the furniture, but he lets her have this missed phase of childhood. Apart from the still unfulfilled promise of the sea, it is as idyllic a picture of domestic bliss as he could have hoped for since Emily’s death.

“What is it, my dear?” He smiles easily.

“I think I met a criminal today,” Mathilda muses. She tosses her red hair in an imitation of nonchalance, but he sees it is practiced. It demands his attention.

He is all too happy to give it. “I have asked you not to wander around the station…” the warning is genuine, but the tone is warm, indulgent.

“Oh, it wasn’t in the station!” Mathilda looks up at him, her expression and voice gently rebuking him for being so ignorant. She surveys his expression and suppresses a smile, looking down quickly.

His book has closed, now rests on the table next to him. He removes his glasses and leans forwards. He tries to compose his face into the mask of a detective inspector, but the insouciance of the girl at his feet makes his lips twitch. The slight flicker of concern about the topic she has broached is of little significance to him given her playful attitude.

“Oh?”

She looks up to meet his eyes again, grinning. “No, it was when you and Miss Cobden were talking in the street…”

A frown creases his brow. He had asked her to wait at a distance whilst he spoke to Jane, and the notion that this might have raised the interest of any of Whitechapel’s insalubrious residents is an unsettling one.

Despite months without the contact of anyone but the Buckleys, Mathilda remains a perfect judge of her father’s emotions; in the way only a daughter could be. She registers his deepening worry and grows skittish again.

“But of course I know I am not to talk to strangers,” she says breezily, and goes back to her colouring.

Edmund does not move, keeping his gaze on her. He clasps his hands between his knees, forces himself to draw a deep breath and remain calm; if anything serious had truly happened earlier that day she would not now be so cheerful, he reminds himself. If anything had happened she would have shouted and he would have heard; she had been barely ten paces from him at all times.

Mathilda watches from the corner of her eye and waits, scribbling more determinedly at the page.

“What did…this person say to you then?” Edmund makes his voice be steady, but the inspector’s face is now no façade.

She puts her crayon down once more and looks at him a little more seriously. She offers a shrug and a half-smile. “She did not look like a criminal to me. She seemed very kind. She thought I was lost and on my own.”

“I see…” he still berates himself, but the confusion and curiosity this tale has elicited is returning.

“She had a nice dress and a sweet smile,” Mathilda goes on, her eyes wandering across the ceiling as she recalls the picture. “Her eyes were twinkly and she had black, curly hair.”

Mathilda has her father’s complete attention and revels in it, her impish smile returning. He raises his eyebrows a little, a signal to continue if she will.

“But I think she must have done something very wicked,” Mathilda obliges, her voice full of the certainty of youth. “For when I said ‘oh no, miss, I am here with my daddy and Miss Cobden’, and I pointed to you, she went very pale.”

Edmund is so wrapped up in the story that he pays little attention to the details, letting his ego delight a little in the amusement of some petty street criminal quaking with fear at having inadvertently approached the daughter of Detective Inspector Reid. He smiles once more. “Oh yes? And then what did she do?”

“Well then she went bright red and left!” Mathilda giggles, evidently bored with stringing out the story any longer. “She kept looking back at you and I am sure she must have been afraid of you, and only wicked criminals are afraid of my daddy.”

He mirrors her grin. When he smiles like this the tight new skin at his scalp aches a little: he revels in the sensation. He has not had cause to smile so broadly for such a long time, and the healing wound to his head is a constant reminder that he is lucky to have lived to enjoy this moment with his daughter. He stands, still wishing he felt strong enough to scoop her up in his arms. “Quite so! And now, bedtime.”

She makes an unimpressed face only briefly before standing and entwining her small arms around his.

Once she is tucked up in her small bed, sleeping softly, he returns to the empty living room and picks up the papers and crayons from the floor.

It is only sometime later, as he swirls a nightcap in his glass and finds himself longing for a different spirit — something clear and flavoured with sweet spices — that he revaluates the details of Mathilda’s tale. _A sweet smile. Twinkly eyes. Curly black hair_. A layer of memory peels back; this description matches Jane, it even matches Emily once upon a time, but it also matches another old ache in his heart.

His book sits unread in his lap. He thinks of a building in the Jewish quarter. The muffled creaks of a cast-iron bed. Hands sensitive but devoid of judgement tracing their paths across the scarred skin of his torso. The first person since Abberline he had told everything to. The first sympathetic listener to it all.

Could it have been her? Why had she not stayed? He can only think that she would be delighted to learn of Mathilda’s recovery. Her heart was so big. How selfish he had been, to take up residence there within it. But she had never once told him he was wrong about Mathilda. Had never told him so expressly that it was a false hope and vain.

He whispers another quiet word of thanks to Deborah Goren as he drains the last of his drink.

**Author's Note:**

> The scene in s3 where Reid and Jane talk in the street and he tells Mathilda to stand at a distance infuriated me at the time I watched it, like OMG you've only just got her back! But luckily all was well.
> 
> I am nothing if not predictable in my love of Debmund.
> 
> But Jane doesn't get much time in this fandom (let alone the show), so I'm going to try and write something for her next.


End file.
